ground. he's going to be trampled to death by the other riders. he used his own face for the rider. which was somewhat symbolic. because doing these magnificent bronzeers took years and took a toll on him. it was going to be his birthday, and shrady died two weeks before the statue was dedicated. he was literally trampled by that statute. for the second time in recent months. former first lay days barbara busch and laura bush sat down for a conversation about life in the white house.

in this discussion we hear barbara bush on her husband's 1991 loss to bill clinton and her thoughts on the 2012 presidential campaign. laura bush speaks about her work on behalf of women in afghanistan. and about the moment she realized that average americans really do listen to what the first lady has to say. this hour-long conversation took place at the george w. bush presidential center in dallas, texas, as part of the conference. america's first ladies and enduring vision. [ applause ] >> hello, my name is mark langdale, president of the

george w. bush foundation. i want to welcome to you the final panel of a great event we're having today with the national archives and records administration. in my job, i get asked a lot, how do get the chance to work on building something as interesting and significant as the george w. bush presidential center? and i go, well, i have experience building complex real estate projects. i served in government. i'm interested in presidential history. i even like to watch c-span3. but the -- the big reason and the real reason that i have this really great job is 23 years

ago, george and laura bush moved to dallas, texas and bought the house next door to me and we became friends, and if there is one thing i can testify to, it's true then, and true today. is that george and laura bush are true partners in life. and george w. bush truly and deeply loves his wife. it's an honor to introduce a man that truly and deeply loves his wife, the 43rd president of the united states, george w. bush. [ applause ] >> thank you all for coming. so it seems fitting to me that for the american first ladies conference we actually have first ladies. and it's my honor to introduce

them. before i do so, i want to thank mark langdale for his leadership of the george w. bush foundation, and thank anita mcbride for conceiving and sharing what has been a fascinating discussion. mcbride for con receive actually watched some of it being streamed over the internet. i want to thank gerald turner of smu and the smu folks. smu is an awesome university by the way, and we're honored to be associated with them. and neil kerwin, president of american university and his wife ann have joined us. thank you for being here. i want to thank the library directors, alan lowe, of course, of the bush president 43. warren finch, bush president 41. i'll be the funny guy. and mark updegrove of the lyndon johnson library right up the

road. we have an awesome historian. i read a lot of history when i was president. i can hear people saying, we paid you all that money and all you did was read? sit around reading? it was fascinating. i didn't watch much tv. it was fascinating to read history while i had the honor of making history. and no better historian to help a president understand the past and future by the way, than for is kearns goodwin. we're honored you are here. [ applause ] and so the other thing that impressed me about doris kearns goodwin, she raised a son who became a united states marine. volunteered to be a united

states marine after september the 11th. i have the honor of introducing the best first lady ever. mom, would you take a tie? obviously, i don't mind being surrounded by strong women. i was raised by one, i married one, and i believe we're raising two. welcome former first ladies, barbara and laura bush. >> thank you very much. >> i thought it was me. [ applause ] >> well, for me, this is such a great honor.

you can imagine having spent my life trying to bring presidents and first lady who's were no longer alive to life? i got live ones here. much more fun. >> we hope. >> i always worry -- i worry that in the -- >> careful. >> i worry that someday -- i worry that someday in the afterlife there will be a panel of presidents that i ever studied and everyone will tell me everything i got wrong. and the first person to yell out will be lbj, how come that book on the kennedys was twice as long as mine. what was it like when you first get to the white house? have you this great line where you said i woke up with the president elect. what's it like to wake up with the president in the morning? and know you are in a place with 132 rooms and you have to make it a home? how do you do that? >> the house really i think was very easy. we brought furniture for the one family room, which was beautiful. and our own curtains came,

matched the couches that we brought. it's -- first of all, 90-some people who work for you are family. they really are. and when we went back all those years later, eight years later, when george and laura were there, there was our family. they were still there. some of them still there. not many anymore. old age got them. >> did you have a favorite place in the white house where you liked to go? >> well, i loved my little office, because it was -- besides being nancy reagan's beauty parlor, which she didn't like me to say, but it was. the dogs were born there, and you could look out the window at jackson place and the -- what's that park?

>> lafayette square. >> lafayette square and see all sorts of wonderful things. nobody else faced that part of washington, but i saw more people protesting us and some people who loved us, and i saw people at weddings. they would back up and have a wedding picture taken. i saw my first black bridesmaids dresses backing up to have their pictures taken by the white house. i mean their dresses were black, which i thought was amazing. >> i loved looking out people. >> how did you go about -- you had already been there. >> i had a huge advantage that nobody else had except louisa adams. i had been there so often. having been there with my father-in-law president bush that is really is a home and i knew bar had made it into a home. our little girls when they were 7, when their grandfather was president, could slide down the ramp from the conservatory, the solarium, that you saw on several of the photos earlier, the wooden ramp, slide down on that on their bottom or make the running jump to the one big antique bed that was so tall that it required steps to get

into, but barbara and jenna could run and jump. and sasha and malia were shown all those tricks from their childhood. i really knew. and because i knew there was this really magnificent collection of white house furniture, didn't move anything with us. we had just moved into our ranch house which is where all of our furniture went. so i brought one chest of drawers for my dressing room that was george's grandmother's, i just have that there, just to remember her, and then brought some of our books, a few of our books, also knew we would get lots of books, didn't bring our whole library and personal

photographs and had a wonderful time going to the big warehouse. you can't call it a warehouse, because it's really climate and temperature controlled with a conservator, storage space where the furniture is kept and bringing back pieces to the white house. >> to what extent are you aware of other presidents and their -- their first wives or first ladies being there. >> i think very much. i think there is a place in the white house that later became closets for ladies clothes, where i hung my evening clothes and things, if walk down, looking out at lafayette square where presidents made great pronouncements to people and we brought a historian up. lincoln historian up, and he said i can't believe i'm here. now, granted, they had redone the white house, but he felt he knew it. so he went right to the closet. down the corridor, and i think the girls' rooms opened. >> on both sides. >> he ran right down there and

looked, and there wasn't the portico or something there, and he could feel lincoln giving the speech. >> wow. i can imagine that. >> and it was very exciting with him. one thing i forgot to mention, the thing i love most, i could hear jenna and barbara and marshall and walker, giggling, laughing, riding bikes and swimming and who knew what? and george loved that. they would swim and come in -- and neil's children. but they lived in washington. jenna and barbara, they all came to visit. it was so cute. in your own house and your grandchildren come, you work. when they come to the white house, there are 90-some people who will take care of them. >> when did you think of restoring the lincoln room? speaking of lincoln. i was able to see that, and you just did an amazing job. >> really, do you think of

presidents the whole time you are there, and there is great comfort in that. you think of all of the other challenges that other presidents faced and our countries faced and how we overcame that challenge. it was very comforting after september 11th to know we can overcome this too and that we'll move on and while peace may not be forever, neither is war, and there is a great continuity of living in a house where all of the presidents, every one of them, except for george washington had lived before you. so one of the things you do, you live with the effects of all the people that live before you. you live with their decorating, with their taste, their choice in -- in furniture, or in china or in decorative arts. all the things that were acquired by the white house

during other terms. and slowly, i moved different pieces from the storage and set up each room and at one point during the second term, we determined it was time to redo the lincoln bedroom. last been done during president ford i believe. actually set up as a bedroom after truman renovated the white house. the bedroom, the bed, had been in a room that's now the upstairs dining room across the hall from the presidential bedrooms. the room that's now set up is the lincoln bedroom, was lincoln's office before the west wing was built. obviously all the offices down at that end of the residence hall and it was the room that lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation in. and we owned one of the five

original copies of the gettysburg address, written in lincoln's hand and that was in the room and our guests, who would come stay in the lincoln bedroom, would look at that copy of the gettysburg address and read it and weep. it was very moving to see. and so i worked with the white house historical association with the furniture curators and historians part of the advisory board, and we had little -- a little remnant of the wallpaper that had been on the wall of his room, we had photographs of the lincoln bed with the gold corona, with purple and gold drapes that hung down from the corona. we knew from white house records that the corona had been sent away from the white house in 1927, so we reproduced all those things. so it's not a real reproduction, neither it's an office or a bedroom, but instead both. we went back to the same mill in england that had run the carpet for him on the 27-inch loom. >> wow. >> and we knew from the records

that the carpet was "g" and "o," which the curators think meant green and oak, which is green and brown. we went back to the mill, and they don't have records what they sold to the white house, but we used a pattern that we think was the same. >> and i remember he signed the emancipation and proclamation in that room. he had shaken so many hands on new year's morning, his own hand was numb and shaking. if i sign with a shaking hand, posterity will say he hesitated. so he waited and waited until he could sign. and it's a really big, bold hand for him. it's great. >> do you remember the first guest of the bush family who stayed in that bed? we immediately sent a new mass mattress for the lincoln bed. the most uncomfortable bed. bucky and patty. our brother and sister-in-law said nobody could sleep on this

bed. >> one night i was able to sleep in churchill's room and no way i could sleep. i was certain he was sitting in the corner drinking his brandy and smoking his cigar. that's the theme of a favorite story in world war ii, and he churchill came after pearl harbor, they were supposed to sign a document, but roosevelt didn't like the word associated nations and wanted to call them united nations. comes wheeling in to churchill's bedroom to tell him the news. but churchhill is just coming out of the bathtub and has nothing on. he said oh, no, please stay. the prime minister has nothing to hide from the president. so anyway, speaking of churchill, sticking his stomach out, i recognized there is no regular ritual day in the white

house, but what amazed me about you is number one, the athleticism of you. number two, that you write a diary. we historians are so sad to think in the future, 200 years from now are not going to have diaries. it's my favorite treasure. did you have a regular time you wrote in the diary? >> i wake up very early. i woke up at 6:00 this morning. >> and wake up lively? >> i don't talk to anybody. wake up, put the dogs out, get the coffee, pick up the paper, but in those days, i really woke up pretty lively, and i just learned how to use a computer, and i -- i wrote a diary and actually jon meacham has been given permission to open them not for 50 years. >> who would guess? >> not to my precious

daughter-in-law. anyway, i wrote a diary, and he is allowed to read part of it. but i didn't -- i'm ashamed to say i did lot write too much about we have a war going on. i really wrote more about i don't know what. i haven't read my diary in years. it's in the library and anyone who reads it other than john meacham in a certain number of years will be shot. >> i guess as an historian, i won't be reading that. >> barb is so unbelievably disciplined. it takes a lot of discipline to write in a diary, and then she would go to the white house pool and swim laps. >> now i can't. since i have new knees, they sink. i'm in real trouble. >> what fun it must have been to live with you. wow. >> i don't know as george thinks so. >> i think he does.

speaking of routines of the day, when i read your memoir, the funniest thing is when you talked about at the white house probably seen it every year on television, but it's the evening when all of the white house correspondents, the press that so george was always very funny at every one of the white house correspondents' dinners. he said finally, i have run out of ideas why don't you surprise everyone and speak. so i had a very funny speech.

then i talked about being a desperate housewife and how mr. excitement here was already in bed at 9:30. i said i went to chippendales, and justice ginsberg. most countries you can't roast the president like that. so for a year after that at least on foreign travel, heads of state when we were somewhere else would take me aside and

say, are you really a desperate housewife? mes it backfires. it was a white tie dinner, the gridiron. where they take themselves so seriously. it was on april 1st. so i worked with my hairdresser and i wore a red wig and came out in my evening dress and george says, you're not going like that, are you? and i said, yeah, i am. so we went to the dinner. some people thought i had cancer. some people said who is that woman with the president? nobody thought it was funny. i had gone through great trouble to get this wonderful wig.

but it backfired. >> to what extent do first ladies get involved in the preparing the meals or menus that will be eaten just for your ordinary night? >> none. >> ordinary night? >> no everything they cooked was good. i do wish i was there. only for the meals. we did have tastings for state dinners. we usually invited congressmen who weren't going to be invited to the state dinner over to be the guinnea pigs. but the white house chef would we would call and say i don't think so. >> it was unbelievable food. i remember that your husband

didn't like broccoli. and that became a famous moment. do you know fdr hated broccoli, too? and his chef at the white house, who was a woman, and she was really tough would constantly serve him broccoli, because he should eat it. even though he didn't like it. >> exactly. he cut out corn flakes, 19 cents. couldn't i have something other than oatmeal? he said he was getting chicken six nights a week. his stomach was rebelled so much that he built a foreign power. so texas is so fortunate to have had three first ladies in recent history. tell me about your feelings for lady bird johnson. who i had such p enorm mouse respect for.

>> i felt so badly. when we went to washington i was so offended by the attitude of the condition -- the kennedy people were there who said, i wish you had been here in the good times, instead of the awful texans. i said, i'm a texan. i said, well then my five children are. we stopped going to those dinners. they ridiculed her accent. she was the most wonderful lady. she did more for beauty in this country and she was so generous and genuine. and until laura, she was my favorite first lady.

i loved her. >> i also really admired her. i was at graduate school in texas. they were there. greeting every single person that came through. but i did get to take her on a tour the last time they went to the white house. lynn dra -- linda brought her and she was in a wheelchair and she lost her speech by then from a stroke. she was still so expressive with her hands. and i showed her president johnson's paintings again. and she put her arms out to him and when we met her at the door, the doorman was -- had been the matre' d, and they fell into each other's arms and hugged. so it was really a wonderful pleasure to get to show her the white house that last time. >> she came to the white house when we there were too. and told me a story about the picture of the little grumpy girl. that's right. a group standing, looking at it

and someone said, maybe lady bird said, isn't she grumpy? and a voice in the back said, she wasn't always, i married her. you know the picture? the little grumpy girl. >> what it shows, when we often talk about first ladies and i like to talk about that in a minute. we talk about what they've done and you have both done so much on literacy and reading. and lbj was such a character. and she could put a hand on the knee and say lyndon, you don't really mean that. there was just such an ease with them. that what you do in your marriage, your partnership, that's the real power, besides all the things do you in the world at large. let's start with you and literacy. i know what you have done and how did it happen that you choice that? >> i jogged around memorial park one year, knowing george was going to run.

granted, nobody else thought he was, but anyway, i tried to think of something. i had worked in hospitals always as a volunteer, and then i thought i should do something that would help the most people and cost the government less money. i didn't want to be controversial. i got problems with that anyway. i wanted to keep it down. it comes naturally. but i picked literacy, because there is no question in my mind and now i've gone into family literacy, because if you have a mother or father or caretaker that can read, they can follow their child in school and help them. if they can't, then the child doesn't have any inspiration. statistics in our country are shocking. the number of children who do not graduate from high school and just drop out of the system, and so we're working very hard still. i have turned my foundation over, they don't seem to take it as well as they should, but jeb and dara are doing nationally

and neil and maria are on doing texas and george p. and mandy under them are doing ft. worth and dallas and keep saying mom, just sign this letter. i am happy to do that. i want them to take over. i'm 80 -- almost 87. and i'm delighted to be here, but george needs me. his legs have said no more. will not move and it makes a huge difference. what's more, i am loving having him to myself. i'm loving it. about time. but he's -- he's wonderful, he's loving and sweet. and he adores if the children are all great. neil and maria live across the street. certainly something i never would have done. she built a house across the street from us.